Saturday 11 May 2019

The Affair - Lee Child - Jack Reacher Book 16

The Affair
Jack Reacher Book 16
Lee Child
Penguin Random House Canada
ISBN 9780385344326
eISBN 9780440339359
ASIN B004P8JPS6



I have read a Jack Reacher book each week for the past dozen weeks. This was the first one I did not thoroughly enjoy. It is the 16th novel in a series that is expecting the 24th installment this year. So that makes it exactly two thirds of the way through the series at the time of writing this review. Typically, when I finish a Reacher novel, I cannot wait to read another and the only issue is what one to read next. Fortunately, it was a toss up when I started this one, because I had picked up both this and Tripwire book 3, to read. Or it might have been a while before I circled back.

This is the story of what happened to prompt Reacher to leave the military. It is a convoluted mystery with a Senator, a Senator’s Son in the Military, a former Marine investigator, who was roughly equivalent to Reacher in Rank and she is now the local sheriff. And a string of dead bodies, all women, and all beautiful. Reacher takes on the military complex, a milita and some serious muscle that was sent after him. 

Sounds like a great story eh? My problem with it, is that there was way too much sex, if I wanted to read romance novels, I would read a romance novel. I know that Jack Reacher is Reacher and like Captain Kirk of old, he has a different woman in every story. But this time it was just so much. I can definitively state this is my least favorite Reacher novel. It is the only one I have given les than 4 stars. And it was a close toss up between 2 and the 3 it got. This book just feels different than the other Reacher novels I have read. I did love his tenacity, his pursuit of justice, and his willingness to lay it on the line for what is right. But is the sex scenes made more sense the book as a whole would have worked better for me.

All that being said I have already picked up another Reacher novel to read and with 24 novels, several short stories, Jack Reacher's Rules, and offerings in anthologies and mash up short stories there is a lot in the Reacher canon to read, and I still plan to read them all! In any series there is likely to be a least favorite, I am just surprised by the gap after all the other Reacher stories I had read, I just expected more, expected better.

Books by Lee Child:
Jack Reacher Books Publishing Order:

Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
The Visitor /Running Blind
Echo Burning
Without Fail
Persuader
The Enemy
One Shot
The Hard Way
Bad Luck and Trouble
Nothing to Lose
Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For
The Affair
A Wanted Man
Never Go Back
Personal
Make Me
Night School
The Midnight Line
Past Tense
Blue Moon

The Sentinel Jack Reacher's Rules
...

Reacher Short Stories and Novella’s:
No Middle Name – Complete Collected Short Stories
Stories in No Middle Name Collection:
Too Much Time
Second Son
Deep Down
Guy Walks into A Bar
James Penney’s New Identity
High Heat
Everyone Talks
Not A Drill
Small Wars
Maybe They Have A Tradition

No Room At The Motel
The Picture of the Lonely Diner

Other Short Stories:
The Fourth Man
The Christmas Scorpion
...
Faking a Murderer with Kathy Reichs
Cleaning the Gold with Karin Slaughter
Good and Valuable Consideration with Joseph Finder
...

Other Books by Lee Child
The Hero
Jack Reacher: A Mysterious Profile
...





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